Fun vs Gam - What's the difference?
fun | gam |
(informal) enjoyable, amusing
(informal) whimsical, flamboyant
amusement, enjoyment or pleasure
* 2000 , Robert Stanley, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Adobe Photoshop 6 , Alpha Books, page 377
playful, often noisy, activity.
(colloquial) To tease, kid, poke fun at, make fun of.
(slang) A person's leg, especially an attractive woman's leg.
* 2010 , Home Swell Home: Designing Your Dream Pad (ISBN 0743446356), page 19:
* 2012 September 10, (Ariel Levy), "The Space In Between", in The New Yorker :
(Collective noun used to refer to) a group of whales, or rarely also of porpoises; a pod.
* 1862 , Henry Theodore Cheever, The Whalemen's Adventures in the Southern Ocean , Darton & Hodge, page 116:
* 1985 , Dennis Kyte, To the Heart of a Bear: The Last Elegant Bear (ISBN 067154781X):
* 2010 , Jack White, Mastery of Self Promotion (ISBN 0557339510), page 119:
* (seemoreCites)
(by extension) A social gathering of whalers (whaling ships).
* 1851 , Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale , Harper and Brothers,
* 1916 , Harry B. Turner, Nantucket's Early Telegraph Service'', in the ''Proceedings of the Nantucket Historical Association , page 50:
* 1997 , Gillies Ross, ?Margaret Penny, This Distant and Unsurveyed Country (ISBN 0773516743), page 14:
* 2007 , Tom Chaffin, Sea of Gray: The Around-the-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah (ISBN 0374707006), page 230:
(nautical) To make a social visit on another ship at sea.
* 2008 , Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (ISBN 0393066665), page 436:
* 2011 , Paul Schneider, The Enduring Shore: A History of Cape Cod (ISBN 0805067345), page 255:
* 2014 , James Revell Carr, Hawaiian Music in Motion (ISBN 0252096525), page 181:
(rfv-sense) .
* 1992 , Kenneth Darwin, Familia 1992: Ulster Geneological Review: Number 8 (ISBN 0901905569):
As verbs the difference between fun and gam
is that fun is give while gam is (nautical) to make a social visit on another ship at sea.As a preposition fun
is for, on behalf of.As a noun gam is
(slang) a person's leg, especially an attractive woman's leg or gam can be (collective noun used to refer to) a group of whales, or rarely also of porpoises; a pod or gam can be .fun
English
Adjective
(en-adj)- We had a fun time at the party.
- He is such a fun person to be with.
- This year's fashion style is much more fun than recent seasons.
Usage notes
* Note that the use of fun as an adjective is often considered unacceptable in formal contexts. For more on the slang comparative and superlative, the use of which is disputed, seethis discussion
Derived terms
* funnyNoun
(-)- Grafting your boss's face onto the hind end of a donkey is fun, but serious fun is when you create the impossible and it looks real.
Synonyms
* amusement, diversion, enjoyment, a laugh, pleasure * boisterousness, horseplay, rough and tumbleDerived terms
* for the fun of it * fun and games * fun bags * funfair * funfest * fun-loving * fun-maker * funny * fun run, fun runner, fun running * funster * good fun * great fun * have fun * have fun with * in fun * like fun * make fun of * poke fun atVerb
- Hey, don't get bent out of shape over it; I was just funning you.
Anagrams
* 1000 English basic words ----gam
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl)Noun
(en noun)- Make the salesclerk blush by flashing some gam and asking him to mix a bucket in your flesh tone.
- The women's-liberation movement of the late sixties and the seventies – the so-called second wave of feminism – introduced Americans to the notion that their mothers and sisters and daughters ought not to be "objectified": that there was something wrong with reducing female people to boobs, gams , and beaver.
References
Etymology 2
Noun
(en noun)- Upon getting into a "gam " of whales, this boat, together with that of one of the mates, pulled for a single whale that was seen at a distance from the others, and succeeded in getting square up to their victim unperceived.
- Breakfast was interrupted as a gam of porpoises surrounded the Argyle , swaying in the foam and singing in gurgles and beeps.
- Christmas day in 1998, we lived on the Pacific Ocean in Pacific Grove, California and watched a gam of whales breaching in the deep ultramarine water.
chapter 53:
- But what is a Gam'? You might wear out your index-finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word, Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster’s ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it. ' Gam . NOUN—A social meeting of two (or more) Whaleships, generally on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats’ crews, the two captains remaining, for the time, on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other.
- There is still that yearning for news from Nantucket that there was when the whale-ships stopped for a gam out in the far-distant Pacific Ocean
- If time was available, whaling prospects poor, and the weather gentle, a gam might last all day and include tea and dinner.
- Twice each year, the Russian Navy sent out such ships to provision Russian whalers in the Sea of Okhotsk. In sailing toward the supposed Russian ship, the Abigail ’s captain, Ebenezer Nye, was hoping for a gam with the ship's officers
Verb
- Although most whalemen looked forward to gamming and enjoyed these ocean-borne gatherings, there were at least a few whalemen who either grew weary of them, or just weary of gamming so often with the same ships over and over.
- This was early in the summer of 1820, after nearly a year at sea, and they had gammed the whaling ship Aurora, which had on board not only plenty of letters but some newspapers as well.
- In chapter 2 we saw how gamming whalers sang songs that tied them to their homelands while emphasizing the transient, cosmopolitan nature of their work,
Etymology 3
From (etyl) .Noun
(en noun)- At some stage some gam of an official decided that Guihen should be translated to the English name Wynne.
